Artist Mike Kelley has passed away at his home in Los Angeles, having apparently taken his own life. The tragic news was confirmed to BLOUIN ARTINFO by Helene Winer, of New York’s Metro Pictures gallery, a long-time associate of the artist.

“It is totally shocking that someone would decide to do this, someone who has success and renown and options,” said Winer. “It’s extremely sad.” She added that the artist had been depressed.

Kelley was born in 1954 in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. He became involved in the city’s music scene as a teen, and while a student at the University of Michigan, formed the influential proto-punk band Destroy All Monsters with fellow artists Jim Shaw, Niagara, and Cary Loren (a retrospective devoted to Destroy All Monsters was held at L.A.’s Prism gallery last year). Together, the band hatched a style of performance that skirted the edge of performance art.

After graduating college in 1976, he moved to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts, studying alongside teachers like John Baldessari and Laurie Anderson. Music continued to be a constant passion: he formed another band, “Poetics,” with fellow CalArts students John Miller and Tony Oursler.

A decade after his death technology has finally caught up to Lomax’s imagination. Just as he dreamed, his vast archive — some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts, much of it tucked away in forgotten or inaccessible corners — is being digitized so that the collection can be accessed online. About 17,000 music tracks will be available for free streaming by the end of February, and later some of that music may be for sale as CDs or digital downloads.

On Tuesday, to commemorate what would have been Lomax’s 97th birthday, the Global Jukebox label is releasing “The Alan Lomax Collection From the American Folklife Center,” a digital download sampler of 16 field recordings from different locales and stages of Lomax’s career.

Jan. 28 is celebrated as National Kazoo Day,a day when, according to organizers, Americans are supposed to take time to recognize the kazoo, that musical instrument that takes only a minute to master for a lifetime to annoy.

But while the kazoo can be irritating when played by a hyperactive 5-year-old, it is a legitimate musical instrument, according to Scott Paulson, who uses kazoos to help provide soundtracks at silent movie screenings.

“It can be annoying, but it can be a delightful instrument,” Paulson told HuffPost Weird News. “It’s known mostly as a child’s toy, but it has a history of being a ritual instrument in Africa.”

Paulson says those early kazoos were used in rituals where the natives would disguise their voices using an animal horn and the membrane from spider eggs.

“It’s basically a mask of the voice,” he said.

Legend has it that the modern kazoo was invented in 1850 by former slave Alabama Vest of Macon, Ga., who devised the plans and than had it built by clockmaker Thaddeus von Clegg, a German immigrant. It was introduced two years later at the 1852 Georgia State Fair, but the familiar sub shape wasn’t created until 1902.

UCSD Arts Library Exhibit: The Lost Art of Letters
January 8 through January 27, 2012

This exhibit provides an opportunity for visitors to browse Library books on the topic of penmanship and cursive writing. Visitors will also browse literature outlining the etiquette of letter-writing (particularly ”thank-you” notes.)

While supplies last, visitors are encouraged to write a letter at the exhibit site using stationery and pens provided.

On Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 3:00 p.m., a free, live event is hosted at the exhibit site: a penmanship expert, local educator Sylvia Rubin, will give quick pointers on how to improve your handwriting. Under this supportive supervision, and with stationery and pens provided by the UCSD Arts Library, visitors will write a neat, tidy letter on-the-spot. At the writer’s request, the UCSD Arts Library will have that very letter delivered to the addressee via the U.S. Postal Service.

The UCSD Arts Library and AAASRC present a magic lantern exhibit showing views of Africa and relaying the African Diaspora. This small exhibit of early magic lanterns, along with some surprising magic lantern slides of Africa, is supplemented with Library materials about the African Diaspora and celebrates the role the magic lantern had in raising awareness of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Perhaps the earliest views Americans saw of Africa came in the form of magic lantern shows (hand-painted glass slides that were used in early gas-lamp-powered projectors). Magic lantern shows relayed news and views of far-away places pre-dating still photography and moving pictures. Even as early as the 1600′s and 1700′s, lively magic lantern shows employed early animation techniques, narration and live music to show the culture of other continents. As early photographic technology grew, the magic lantern’s glass slides became even more valuable in relaying worldly experiences: some of the earliest photographs of Africa were shown to Americans through a magic lantern via glass slides.

This is a collaborative exhibit for Black History Month from the UCSD Arts Library and the African & African-American Studies Research Center. With an opening reception at the exhibit site at 3:00 p.m. on February 1, 2012, hosted by the UCSD Arts Library and AAASRC.

Eva Zeisel, who designed and produced stylish but simple lines of tableware that were credited with bringing a sense of serenity to American dinnertime, died Dec. 30 at her home in New City, N.Y.

Mrs. Zeisel was 105 and had come to America just before World War II, after a harrowing series of adventures in the turbulent Europe of the 1930s.

Her daughter, Jean Richards, confirmed the death but said she did not know the medical cause.

Mrs. Zeisel was widely regarded as a master of modern design. Her salt and pepper shakers, creamers and ladles are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Yet she resisted being characterized as an artist. “Art has more ego to it than what I do,” she once told the New Yorker.

What Mrs. Zeisel did was create everyday objects that fundamentally changed the look of American kitchens and dining rooms.

She brought “a trained designer’s eye and touch to the kind of inexpensive daily goods that were available to everyone,” said Karen Kettering, vice president for Russian art at Sotheby’s and a former curator at the Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens in the District, which featured a retrospective of Mrs. Zeisel’s work in 2005.

Mrs. Zeisel received artistic training in her native Hungary in the years after World War I. She moved to the Soviet Union, where she worked in a factory and, after building a reputation as a talented ceramicist, landed a job as art director of the state-run porcelain and glass industries.

While in that position, Mrs. Zeisel was falsely accused of conspiring to assassinate Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Read more…

This Wednesday, November 23 at noon in the Seuss Room of Geisel Library at UCSD, free!

Always held the day before Thanksgiving, this Annual Turkey Calling Show is a campus favorite. Turkey call lessons, turkey trivia and much more: the American turkey actually got to Europe in the 1500′s and immediately the bird became celebrated in European art and song.
Hosted by sound effects expert Scott Paulson with special guests:
Elizabeth Podsiadlo (San Diego’s opera-singing chef)
Wes Hawkins (UCSD undergrad and banjo aficionado)
Melanie Peters (Library Story Lady)
Aislinn Sotelo (appearing as ‘radio ballet teacher’)

For more information, contact Scott at spaulson@ucsd.edu or call (858) 822-5758

Join radio sound effects expert Scott Paulson and Union Tribune science writer Gary Robbins for a special premiere performance of a live sci-fi radio drama “Passage to Proxima!” written with specially solicited help from the readers of the science section of the Union Tribune and assistance from the listeners of the Science Talk show on WsRadio.com. The action is set in 1935 San Diego (with some perilous time travel, as well!) Featuring live actors, live music & lively sound effects. For more information, contact Scott at spaulson@ucsd.edu, call (858) 822-5758 or visit this site!More Info HERE at SignonSanDiego!